ud o'
their blood, and I used to hear folks talk about the coat of arms that
the squire had hangin' in his front hall. Abram was there once to see
about some land the squire was havin' cleared, and he said he took
particular notice of the coat of arms, but to save his life he
couldn't see why they called it that, for there wasn't any coat or any
arms on it that he could see, jest a curious colored thing, red and
blue and black, and on top of it some kind of a beast standin' on its
hind legs.

"The Elrods come of plain people at the start, but they could hold up
their heads with the best, for they had plenty o' money and plenty o'
learnin', too, and the judge's wife was as blue-blooded as any
Schuyler and twice as proud of her blood, in the bargain. She had
pictures, and silver things, and dishes that'd been in the family for
generations, and her great-great-grandfather was a Fairfax.

"There's some people, child, that'll tell you that one person's as
good as another, and all blood's alike, and all of it red. And maybe
they are right. And when it comes to kindness and right principles and
all that, why, Squire Schuyler and the judge's wife wasn't a bit
better'n Abram and me. But when it come to their manners and their
language, they had somethin' we didn't have. Abram was jest as polite
a man as Squire Schuyler, but he couldn't take off his hat to a lady
the way the squire could, and I couldn't bow and smile like the
judge's wife, and I reckon that's where the blue blood comes in.

"I ricollect talkin' to Parson Page once about this very thing, and he
says, 'The Lord hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth,
and in His sight there is neither high nor low according to blood.'
Says he, 'The Lord looks at the life and the conscience of a man to
tell whether he's high or low; and,' says he, 'in His sight there's
little difference between the good man who is born in the high places
of the earth and the good man who walks in lowly paths. Both are pure
gold, but one's been shaped and stamped by goin' through the mint, and
the other's rough in the nugget.'

"Now, what was I startin' out to tell you, child, before I got to
talkin' about blue blood? Oh, yes, I ricollect now.

"Well, everybody was lookin' for Miss Amaryllis's weddin' cyards,
when, all at once, her and Hamilton had a quarrel, and the match was
broke off then and there. It was a long time before anybody knew what
had happened betwixt the two, but at